Wet Ride

Theresa and I planned a visit to  the Valley to visit friends. We have not been to this favourite place for two years so we planned on several days to make the trip  worth while.We left Oakville with the sun shinning but minutes after we started to experience torrential rains. Visibility was zero so we switched on our emergency flashers and moved in line with the transport trucks.. at tines the road was covered by several inches of water and I feared hydro planing.

Our drive took six hours plus and normally it would be around five hours. We stayed with our good friends Joan and John and ate wonderful food, played several games of hand and foot which is a fun card game and shared gossip. A special visit to my sister and an old friend and working partner made our stay specially friendly.

One of the reasons for the trip was the installation of the Pembroke police force into the OPP. This was a formal and beautiful service complete with formal uniforms, bagpipes and short speeches. About three hundred attended the invitation service and while there we met many old friends and work related folks. There were ten or more of the officers who were former students of mine at PSPS and as each one shook hands I was filled with pride to see these men taking a major career move to help the City of Pembroke keep the town folk safe.

Moving down the Ottawa River we stopped in at our brother in laws home and had a catch up visit as Margie was working. Kevin filled us in at all the latest with the family. Our next stop and a very important one was to see Doug and Patty.

Doug recently had surgery and was out of the hospital for a week but seemed to be doing great after such a short time after the surgery. Being two years since we had a visit we had much to talk about. The first item was the forest around their house.Doug loves trees and even knows the names of most of them and he too was amazed at their growth. We stayed for a little too long as Doug was getting a little tired but we managed to satisfy our need to be together again and we hope it will not be as long again before we will be playing golf and having a drink on his veranda.

We decided to travel half way home and stay with the idea of a golf game in the morning. However Mother Nature decided to send more life giving rain our way. We headed home and again experienced huge rainy weather and a radio announcement that we would be unable to pass through Toronto because of flooding. We took the 407 bypass and toll road and made it to Oakville. These were the worst floods since Hurricane Hazel in 1954. Home we came in over seven hours and scary driving but the visits we experienced were worth the effort. Seeing friends makes up for any difficulty we might experience.